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Local campaign to promote anti-smoking message in Sunraysia region

Date posted: 27 November 2012

An advertising campaign aimed at combating widespread smoking in Indigenous communities is set to be launched in early 2013.

Melbourne-based video production company, NBS Productions, are working with Mildura Aboriginal Corporation (MAC) to film four television advertisements to form part of an ongoing campaign to tackle smoking.

The campaign will be employed across multiple media, and is designed to promote healthy lifestyle messages. The advertisements, filmed in the Sunraysia region of New South Wales and Victoria, target local Indigenous people with a strong community focus.

Ideas for the advertisements, along with creative direction, were shaped by the input of local community members. Locals, rather than actors, were also chosen to feature in the campaign.

'We targeted those who aren't smoking and those who are but wanted to stop, and they now have a public responsibility to be advocating for these commercials,' Ms Akins said.

'That's why it was important for us not to hire actors but to hire members of the local community: so we could inject some money into the local communities as well as having some buy-in and responsibility on the individual and their families.'